Teams ready for random manual auditing

CEBU, Philippines - The Commission on Elections trained yesterday some 122 public school teachers on the general instructions for the conduct of the Random Manual Audit (RMA) to be done in randomly selected precincts throughout Cebu City and Cebu Province.

Pursuant to Commission on Elections Resolution No. 8837, a random manual audit shall be conducted to check on the credibility of the machines or to compare the results of the automated counting from the results of the manual counting only in key national and local positions.

The law requires that five randomly selected clustered precincts per legislative district shall have a parallel manual audit to be conducted right after the transmission of results and shutdown of Precinct Count Optical Scan machines.

There will be five random manual audit teams per congressional district, with three member teachers each team, to facilitate the manual audit.

Cebu has nine congressional districts including the north and south district of Cebu City so the Comelec needs 135 teachers to serve as members of the random manual audit teams.

Nationwide, there will be 3,435 random manual audit team members for the 1,145 clustered precincts that will be hand counted.

The precincts will be selected via raffle with number balls corresponding to the precincts. The selection will be done at the Philippine International Convention Center tomorrow starting noon.

The selection will be open to the media, political parties, citizen’s arm and other concerned parties. Precincts to be manually counted are selected randomly to avoid the manipulation of machines.

According the Comelec Resolution 8837, random manual audit team members must not be able to witness the automated canvassing so they should stay in a separate holding area while waiting for the closing of the PCOS machines.

Immediately the transmission and shut down of PCOS machines, the RMAT shall verify the condition of the ballot box and its fixed-length seals attached to it as well as the padlock to check if the integrity is maintained.

After opening the ballot box, random manual audit team members may retrieve the ballots and proceed with the physical count of the ballots and compare if the number of ballots found inside the ballot box is equal to the number of votes cast as indicated in the minutes of voting and counting.

Election Officer for Cebu City north district Rudy Gilos said that in case there will discrepancies, the chairman of the random manual audit team will record the discrepancy in the RMA minutes.

All reports will then be sent to Manila and if there are things need to be resolved due to the failure of machines as verified by the manual counting, it will be decided by the Commission en banc.

“In no way shall the results of the RMA delay the proclamation of the winning candidates based on the results reached by the automated election system,” the resolution read.

Meanwhile, Board of Election Inspectors of different polling centers in Cebu City have started claiming election forms and paraphernalia from the 12 distribution centers, six in the north district and six in the south, installed by the City Treasurer’s Office to decongest the city hall.

Arthur Echavez, head of the distribution center installed at the Cebu Normal University, said that the distribution went smoothly. It started simultaneously in all 12 centers at 10 a.m. and ended at 5 p.m. Those who were not able to claim their election forms and paraphernalia before 5 p.m. must claim it at the City Treasurers Office directly. (FREEMAN NEWS)